Romantic
by miss.SunFlower
Summary: To Eden McCain, Chandra Suresh is a foolish idealist. Though he hides it better, so is his son. But maybe, just maybe, there's something to all these romantic, heroic, ideals after all. Eden character study-thing. Canon timeline.


I was re-watching the first season of Heroes and it's struck me how much I adore Eden. She is such a fascinating character to me, really. Her past, her motives, her relationships with the other characters she interacts with. I love her a lot more than many of the characters still living/introduced in later seasons. They could have done a lot with her.

Anyways, rewatching I wanted to write MohinderxEden piece, but it turned more into, well, Eden. All Eden. But that's not that bad.

Enjoy!

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Sarah Ellis hadn't been a romantic, not in the slightest. Life and experience had her bitter from a young age and she lived her life accordingly. No responsibility, no ties to anyone, no loyalty except to herself and her power. That was the only way to live. That was the only way she liked it.

Eden McCain was as bitter as Sarah Ellis had been, a name change and a clean slate didn't wash away memories. She liked having them, though, reminders of a person she swore never to return to. And she certainly wasn't naïve to the workings of the company that had saved her yet enslaved her. But a chance at a new life – _a better life_ – gave her something to live for. If she stopped others from going through what she had, perhaps it was all worth it.

Chandra Suresh was a romantic; Eden could tell from the first day she 'casually' knocked on his door, offering him the rest of her dinner. He could pretend he wanted to do his work in solitude but he would share his findings and his studies with her with such enthusiasm and joy she knew he wanted to cry it from rooftops. He saw people with abilities as something wonderful, magical, something to be celebrated, explored. Sarah Ellis's ability was to be ashamed of and, in her company, used only as a tool. He was a foolish, idealistic man, but his thoughts on people like her… for once she had hope to be something more.

Mohinder Suresh was his father's son; just as obsessive, just as romantic. It was almost cute to watch him try to hide it behind skepticism and a reasonable amount of abandonment issues, but once he got going he sounded exactly like Chandra. Eden watched it with a mixture of fondness and guilt. Her orders were to watch Chandra's research, not protect him, but somewhere in the months spent in his company she had blurred the two. His death weighed on her like she'd murdered him herself, and watching his son mourn him as she spied on _him_ made her feel like the worst kind of traitor. It hurt to see him struggle with the research when she stood there, living proof, validating all he'd worked for. She'd bit her tongue more than once to keep herself quiet. Never before had Eden felt tempted to trust someone as she trusted Mohinder. It was going to get her in trouble someday.

She'd never liked what she did for the company, not completely, but they had given her a life far better than Sarah Ellis could have hoped for. Since the business with Chandra, and then Mohinder, however, she felt herself more uncomfortable with her assignments. With the way they used people, people like her, to their own agendas and ones she was growing increasingly uncertain of. Eden liked Mr. Bennet in a general sense. He respected her and her own misgivings and often listened to her. When it came to his daughter, though, it seemed anyone else was collateral damage, expendable. The treatment of Isaac Mendez set her teeth on edge the way no assignment had. She used to think, when bringing macaroni and cheese to Mohinder's apartment, reminding him to eat and biting her tongue, that if she _did_ tell him what she did she could convince him that it was the right thing, that she was helping. Now, she was not so sure.

Keeping Sylar alive, for some larger purpose, felt like a punch in the gut. Too much, too much on top of everything else. Eden didn't know where this feeling of betrayal came from – she had always known these people were more than they appeared. Still she had thought, _hoped_, that Mr. Bennet would step up, would kill the man who had nearly killed his daughter, had killed so many, _had killed Chandra_. What if he got free again? It wasn't out of the realm of possibility, not with what she had seen. He would kill Claire, possibly Mr. Bennet. He would kill Mohinder. He would kill anyone else like her, and anyone, _anyone_, who tried to stop him. And these people – this company wouldn't do anything about it because they had their own games to play. Well not her, not this time.

This idealistic, _romantic_, heroic desire that the world be fair, that evil be destroyed for the good of all was immensely unlike Eden McCain and held no resemblance of Sarah Ellis at all. She didn't notice, or care. She'd been given a chance to be a better person and she was going to damn well take it.

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Hope you liked! :)


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